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Tuesday, 1 December 2015

Paris: It’s all about climate. Apparently.

Several thousand people have consumed many tons of fossil fuels flying to Paris to tell us to stop using fossil fuels. They are likely to issue a document, in Paris, saying the biggest problem facing the world is global warming. Caused by burning fossil fuels.

Lauded at the conference already is Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, for his statement that China will “take action” to help stop the onset of bad weather. Here,in context, is the action already planned in China for the immediate future:

So how many thousand very important egos descended on Paris for this particular political bunfest? Answer: 40,000 delegates (40 fricking thousand of them!) and 140 world leaders with apparently nothing better to do.

It was the largest single-day gathering of heads of state or government in history, the UN said.

Discussing, in Paris, the most important issue facing us all. Which is not terrorism. (That was last week’s thing. Apparently.)

“Never have the stakes of an international meeting been so high because it concerns the future of the planet, the future of life,” French President Francois Hollande said in an opening speech. “The hope of all of humanity rests on all of your shoulders.”

Wow. It’s like we’ve never heard any of this before:

So why are these very important persons so convinced that they should be in Paris discussing climate, instead of terrorism?

It cannot be what is happening to world temperatures, because they have gone up only very slowly, less than half as fast as the scientific consensus predicted in 1990 when the global-warming scare began in earnest… Nor can it be the consequences of this recent slight temperature increase that worries world leaders. On a global scale, as scientists keep confirming, there has been no increase in frequency or intensity of storms, floods or droughts, while deaths attributed to such natural disasters have never been fewer, thanks to modern technology and infrastructure. Nor can it be the consequences of this recent slight temperature increase that worries world leaders. On a global scale, as scientists keep confirming, there has been no increase in frequency or intensity of storms, floods or droughts, while deaths attributed to such natural disasters have never been fewer, thanks to modern technology and infrastructure.

So, what “action” do they intend to make us take, all these 40,140 very important persons, to stop what appears on its face to be a non-problem? Why, they intend to make it harder and more expensive to use the very fossil fuels that sustain human life.

Anyone who says "keep fossil fuels in the ground" is also saying "put more people in the ground."

Blunt. But fair.

But apart from flying to one of the world’s great cities for a week in Parisian restaurants, just how seriously do these thousands actually take all their talk themselves?

If all the world’s leading nations stick to the carbon-reduction commitments they will make in Paris this week, then they will stave off “global warming” by the end of this century by 0.170 degrees C.

Shackling western energy production, which means shackling and diminishing human life, simply to lower temperatures by by 0.170 degrees C by century’s end. Is this really about science?

Oh – and that’s the optimistic scenario, calculated by Bjorn Lomborg, assuming that countries like, say, China don’t lie or cheat about how much CO2 they’re burning secretly. His more pessimistic – i.e., more realistic – scenario is that the best we can hope for is a reduction in global warming by the end of the century of 0.048 degrees C. This temperature reduction – five hundredths of one degree – is so small as to be almost immeasurable. But if you want to know what it feels like, Willis Eschenbach has done the calculations. It’s the equivalent of walking five metres higher up a mountain. Or, if you prefer, climbing two flights of stairs. And there you have it: the lunacy of the Paris climate conference in one sentence: $1.5 trillion every year till the end of the century to effect the equivalent of walking to your bedroom.

So while the “action” aimed for will be utterly ineffective in their stated goals (of ending alleged catastrophic global warming), they would be effective in shackling western energy production. Which gives you a clue about what’s going on here. As economist George Reisman often says, observe how all the “action” they talk about taking is government action to ban private actions. Which gives you a clue to some of the political motivation here. As a commenter says on this thread “Funny how the ‘cure’ is the re-distribution of wealth.”

With China and India rapidly increasing their coal fired plants up so they can increase their productive output, with the west wanting to decrease their productive output by imposing rules, taxes and restrictions on emissions, China and India are going to be laughing all the way to their banks.

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